Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe

by Bernardo Kastrup

In an invited address to the Society for Psychical Research in 1919, he uttered the following memorable words: “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything that I cannot explain as a fraud.” Unfortunately, from my perspective, many of those who call themselves Jungians do not share Jung’s courageous attitude.

The essence of both consciousness and the unconscious is thus experiential, experience being the unifying factor that brings them together as integral parts of the psyche.

Indeed, in Jung’s view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.

The picture we are left with is that of a psyche divided into three layers: the bottom, primordial layer is the collective unconscious, which consists of psychoid contents that can never reach ego-consciousness (although they can still impinge on ego-consciousness and thereby cause introspectively accessible effects, such as dreams and visions). The middle layer, sandwiched between the other two, is the personal unconscious. The top layer, which we ordinarily identify with, is ego-consciousness. Psychic contents can move between the personal unconscious and ego-consciousness.

Jung explains this by comparing an archetype to the axial system of a crystal, which, as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own. … The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal

Just as the notes produced by guitar strings exist only abstractly, in pure potentiality, unless and until the string is actually plucked, the natural, archetypal modes of excitation of the psyche are only discernible in actual experience, not in and of themselves.

Does our ego give us the opportunity to express ourselves according to the natural dispositions and abilities of our whole psyche? Or does it, instead, restrict us to the confines of our ego’s arbitrary, culture-bound notions of self-worth?

In an important sense, what Jung is saying is that our physical, waking reality is amenable to symbolic interpretation, just as our dreams are. The external world, too, conveys meaning through symbolic expression, as if it were “the dream of a greater and more comprehensive consciousness.” 8

It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, non-psychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfills itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. (AJ: 58, emphasis added)

In other words, causality is to synchronicity as Newtonian mechanics is to quantum physics.

The gist of Jung’s view of the mind-body relationship is thus that the body owes its existence and function to the psyche, not the other way around.

Jung thinks of the transpersonal ground beyond ourselves as an extension of the psychic “substance”—οὺσία— which not only links living beings together, but also living beings and the inorganic world.

The qualities we attribute to physicality—form, color, temperature, consistency, concreteness, etc.—are merely appearances; they are how a fundamentally psychic ‘world-soul’ presents itself on the screen of our perceptions. Such idealist interpretation allows all of Jung’s key metaphysics-related contentions—not only synchronicity—to cohere elegantly and parsimoniously.

Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. (ONP: 148)

The external world we perceive with our sense organs, as it is in itself, is transcendent, autonomous, independent of our volition, seemingly separate from us, animated by its own impetus and organized according to archetypes (cf. synchronicity). We perceive this world because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through the sense organs, generating the autonomous imagery of perception. In an entirely analogous manner, the collective unconscious, as it is in itself, is also transcendent, autonomous, independent of our volition, seemingly separate from us, animated by its own impetus and organized according to archetypes. We perceive the collective unconscious because its dynamisms impinge on ego-consciousness through a shared, internal psychic boundary, generating the autonomous imagery of dreams and visions. Do you see the elegant symmetry of this view?

We, human beings, by virtue of surrounding the “mundus archetypus” and being surrounded by the “physis,” occupy the “middle position” between the two.

Jung’s God is an all-encompassing overmind, of which we are diminutive segments, daemons, dissociated psychic complexes.

We can render this service to God because, “just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious” (MDR: 358). This way, simply by reflecting upon life and world we already automatically contribute to God’s self-awareness, whether we know it or not. Jung’s view implies that human life has inevitable meaning.

Jung’s work is a tour de force of the psyche, which—remarkably— leads to direct insights into the nature of life and the universe at large. Three key ideas underlie his implicit metaphysical system: first, that of the collective unconscious as a transpersonal experiential field, which generates all autonomous imagery we experience as both the perceived physical world and the worlds of dreams and visions; second, that of consciousness as an internally connected web of psychic contents that turns in upon itself so as to enable self-reflection; and third, that of daemons, autonomous psychic complexes that, although internally connected and conscious, are dissociated from their psychic surroundings.

Whatever our perceptual apparatus did evolve to register, we label physis or physicality; but that doesn’t mean that what it doesn’t register doesn’t exist out there. Our inability to pick out discarnate daemons with our five senses says nothing about the daemons’ metaphysical status, but only about our five senses. For all we know, those invisible entities are as real and concrete as a person.

Jung’s legacy is a treasure with the potential to enrich our lives in unsuspected ways, provided that it is discovered and properly understood. Co-opted as it has been by the mainstream—a necessary evil—it must be perused carefully if its true message and implications are to be discerned. The little volume you’ve now almost finished reading has been my attempt to facilitate such discovery. In this spirit, I leave you with Jung’s words: Nobody can know what the ultimate things are. We must, therefore, take them as we experience them. And if such experience helps to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: “This was the grace of God.” (PR: 114)